@nquinoneso and @implosian made a logo for our lab and it's incredible. I can't get over it

Another for the “AI overlords clueless about useful biosafety guardrails” file Asked Claude Opus 5.5 to go through a *published* synbio paper on bacterial expression of innocuous model proteins and pull the best performing design No can do! That’s dangerous!

Tenure-Track Professor in Life Science and AI mcb.harvard.edu/department/n… @VMurthyLab

We're searching for an assistant/associate professor in Bioengineering at Stanford! If you're using cutting-edge engineering approaches to understand or control biological systems in useful ways (medical, environmental, etc), we'd love to hear from you! facultypositions.stanford.ed…

Brainstorming with frontier AI models in more open ended domains (like bio that do not have closed verifiable loops) that you have deep expertise in, really showcases the pretense of understanding that they display. 1/

Astonishing how bad @AnthropicAI's biosafety filters remain, even after this long. "Sometimes flag[s] biology-research-adjacent work" for obviously benign requests is pure marketing nonsense. Absolutely amateurish for a company that claims to sell intelligence

Really looking at a Two Of Every Animal situation over here in Boston

This tweet was written every year since 2014. At least two things were holding it back: a lack of a decent protocol compiler, and a lack of real-time error correction with embedded sensors. The first is now basically solved, I’ve seen little progress on the second.

A study by @UCSF, NEB, @nih, and HUN-REN Biological Research Centre researchers identifies END nucleases, anti-viral systems within diverse bacteria that target bacteriophages with hypermodified DNA. These nucleases are composed of two domains: a catalyically inactive DNA glycosylase similar to those typically found in DNA repair pathways and a nuclease cleavage domain. This family of restriction endonuclease shows a remarkable diversity of substrates, being able to target bacteriophages with modified cytosines, thymines, and guanines in their DNA. The END nucleases are another striking example of how nature can repurpose protein domains and enzyme activities for new functions, in this case to protect the cell from its viral predators. nature.com/articles/s41564-0…

Imagine developing the world’s most powerful intelligence and then being afraid to apply it to the hardest problems in medicine because that might puncture a narrative about AI soon curing all diseases. Not any one AI company or person, but it’s a vibe I’m learning to recognize. Makes you appreciate that to create new medicines you don’t just need insight, technology, etc. You need courage.

We are, in fact, recruiting pioneer-labs.org/team

Excited to see our collaboration with @KatrinaVelle, @FritzLaylin, & others published in @PNASNews. In it, former postdocs @RamaswamyMeera & @BabakVH studied how a relative of "brain-eating" amoebae move through sediment-like packings. 🦠 Check it out at doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2534165…!

So you get to do biology with Claude but nobody else does? Please lift the safeguards, they are ridiculous.

Ok I’m willing to admit my Claude/Fat Bear Week joke fell flat

Beautiful new ncRNA systems and a fantastic development in the field! 🎉💪🏻

It’s Fat Bear Week!  @Interior manages over 500 million acres of public lands, including the pristine wilderness of Katmai National Park. After months of feasting on salmon in the Brooks River, Katmai’s brown bears are now at their largest size. Vote for your favorite: fatbearweek.org

Just one thing this week, and it's bear-loading explore.org/fat-bear-week

Come be my colleague! My department (Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech) is hiring a tenure-track professor in the area of Computational Genetics. See more info and view the job posting here: tinyurl.com/5fxwcds3

From the people who rebranded computational statistics as artificial intelligence comes a new name for “rebutting”

Part of me thinks this is great, part of me wonders if @ARIA_research are fulfilling their mandate to fund novel high-risk research if they fund so much AI-related stuff when every other funder, VC and big AI lab is doing the same.